Bride and Prejudice: Austen goes Bollywood

I'm a sucker for anything connected with Jane Austen, and lately there has been a lot of things coming out that are associated with her novels. Such as endless renditions of her classic story of five sisters, Pride and Prejudice. This time, the story takes on a wildly different route by moving the story from the Georgian period of English history in the early nineteenth century to modern day India.

The story opens with a wedding, where the Bakshi family are guests, and it is here that the fateful meeting between between the two leads occurs. Lalita (Aishwarya Rai) is beautiful, but also quite sensible, helping her father manage their farm, and while she is certainly attractive to men, she has no interest in plunging into an arranged marriage just yet. Her elder sister, Jaya (Namrata Shirodkar), meets someone at the wedding, an English barrister, Balraj Bingley (Naveen Andrews), and the interest between them is quite mutual. Arriving along with Balraj are his sister Kiran (Indira Varma) and an American friend, William Darcy (Martin Henderson). While Jaya and Balraj are clearly in love, it's a bit more tricky for Lalita and Darcy -- he views India and its women as culturally quaint and traditional, and while he finds the culture attractive, he'd rather not mix with the more everyday aspects of it, thank you. In short, he's the Ugly American at its worst. Lalita views him with outright contempt, but when Balraj invites Jaya to come with him to the resort of Goa, the Bakshi's insist that Lalita come along as well, as they're not about to let their daughter go alone.

While in Goa, Lalita and Darcy's paths cross nearly continually, but she also meets Johnny Wickham (Daniel Gillies), a drifting, ne'r do well, charmer who manages to attract her romantic interest. Darcy quietly fumes, knowing more about Wickham than he lets on, and things build up between he and Lalita to a quiet, furious simmer. The romance between Balraj and Jaya continues on when the girls return home, but suddenly, Balraj and Darcy both leave without explaination, along with Wickham, leaving the girls desolate.

And their matchmaking Mama (Nadira Babbar) brings in Koli sahib (Nitin Chandra Ganatra), a thoroughly vile Indian expat from America, looking for a wife from the homeland. He's oily, brags about money and his life in America, and while Mama Bakshi thinks he's wonderful, Jaya and Lalita loathe him and his braying laugh. As it still appears that Jaya and Balraj will get together, he focuses his attentions on Lalita, who rebuffs him, sending her mother -- and Mr. Koli -- into a rage. And on the same day he storms off, Jaya is cruelly jilted as well.

Eventually, the entanglements are straightened out, and the right girls get hooked up with the right men, and love reigns. The character of Wickham, and his involvement with Lakhi, one of the younger sisters, is given some new twists here, but stays true to the intent of the original novel.

Director Gurinder Chadha, who also did Bend it Like Beckham does an impressive job with this film. She takes the traditional Bollywood style film, with set dance and song numbers, a cameo appearance by a big name artist (in this it's Ashanti), and a lighter, and at times, silly touch, and makes it nearly palatable for Western audiences. To be honest, I found the musical numbers a bit much to sit through, as I am not very fond of musical theatre to begin with, but once I managed to view it as momentary silliness, it got easier to take.

In fact, that was the worst aspect of this film for me were the song and dance sequences. They all seemed terribly stilted and of early fifties style so beloved of Broadway, and it was very jarring to suddenly have the narrative break into chipper, bright song with the actresses bouncing about in nightwear or something. If you can handle that sort of thing, you'll have a great time, but if not -- well, it nearly caused me to reach for the remote and turn the dvd off then and there. However, it seems to be a staple in some Bollywood films, and indeed, in one sequence shot in a darkened theatre, there's a Bollywood film on the screen.

Sharp eyed viewers will notice that this isn't the first film that Naveen Andrews and Indira Varma have done together -- they also appeared in Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love. The Indian casting of the film is fine, and do well, but Martin Henderson is terribly miscast as Darcy, there's no real spark or interest there, and he appears totally at sea in parts of the film that it gets downright painful to watch.

But one of the pluses is the gorgeous scenery, filmed in India, near the site of the Golden Temple in Amritsar, and in London and Los Angeles as well. The sets are colourful, the costuming traditional and dripping in sensuous lushness. The fact that the director made the Bakshi's a traditionally minded family also helped to shift the story to modern times and still have it work. And then there is the humor -- the best is the over-the-top wedding dream that Lalita has about her two suitors. Other times, it's clearly played for laughs, especially with the hapless Koli sahib and Mama Bakshi.

The DVD version has subtitles in English and Spanish -- I especially recommend that they be on during the musical numbers, as well as an alternate French language track. There are several deleted scenes, and extended musical numbers, interviews with Aishwarya Rai and Martin Henderson, a 'making of" featurette, and audio commentaries by the director and screenwriter.

If you can handle the musical numbers, it's a decent film to watch, and perfectly fine for the younger crowd. There's no nudity, sex or foul language, one well-deserved beating, and hints about misdeeds, and Ashanti in some pretty provocative moves and lyrics, but nothing that would cause clear outrage. This one gets nearly four stars from me, as it's not bad at all, and compared to some of the fare out there, better than most.